ESL blasted over new coaching rules ahead of ESL One: Road to Rio

ESL has asked the CS:GO teams who will participate in ESL One: Road to Rio about a possible update to the coaching rule.

According to a report by DBLTAP, ESL has requested to put the coach’s involvement up for a vote between the professional CSGO teams. The vote was put in today with a 24-hour deadline handed to the teams to make a decision.

The vote was designed in a hard-line fashion for the coaches. The first option for them was to be involved in the server as well as the voice chat, while the other was disallowing the coach completely from both the server and the voice chat. While ESL sugarcoated this by labeling it a ‘Vote’ but this wasn’t much of a vote, to begin with, as even if a single teams vote against having a coach, the motion will be passed.

Prominent professional players like dev1ce and EliGE publicly despised the vote on Twitter. ELiGE didn’t shy away from saying that this move will benefit teams without coaches strategically. The current structure of a lot of teams is based on coaches having a major role, as they can be assessing every player equally which the players cannot do themselves and formulate a strategy to counter their opposition.

The move is assumed to be driven by the fact that it has been difficult for their admins to keep a track of the impact the coaches are having mid-round. While muting them on the voice channel is an option, but teams in a Bootcamp can freely communicate with the coach while keeping their microphones shut.